Impactors CEO Osamah Alfadda on the firm’s launch and ambitions
Following a career in executive roles in banking, Osamah Alfadda became a founding member and CEO of Impactors, a Riyadh-based management consulting firm specializing in strategy execution and delivery. We sat down with Osamah to learn more about his motivations and ambitions with Impactors.
To start with: you were an executive at Alinma Bank. Why move to consulting?
I have spent my career building things inside institutions: business lines, wallets, digital products, operating models. What I kept noticing was how much good thinking dies between the strategy and the delivery. I relished the opportunity to work on that problem across many organizations rather than one, with people I already trust.
Instead of joining an existing consultancy you decided to launch a new consulting firm. Why now?
Because the demand for consulting in Saud Arabia has changed. The biggest challenge facing Saudi organizations right now is execution capacity. There is no shortage of ambition or of capital. The constraints are people and delivery discipline, the ability to run several major programmes at once without losing the detail.
For a decade the question clients asked was “what should we do?” Now most of them know what they want to do, they are asking how to actually deliver it, at pace, with the people they have. That is a different kind of firm from the one the market was built around, and we would rather build it than retrofit it.
Can you tell us more about Impactors?
Impactors is a consulting firm that works from strategy through execution, across the private and public sectors. The firm advises on strategy, growth, product management and digital transformation, with sector depth in financial services, fintech, government, healthcare, tourism, real estate, energy, telecom, media and the non-profit sector.
Saudi Arabia’s consulting market is crowded. What makes Impactors different?
At Impactors, we’re building a consulting firm centred around the current and coming challenges of Vision 2030 delivery. We specialize in delivering tangible results in the implementation phase, and we do not hand over a document and leave; we stay through execution.
We do this with a team that knows exactly what client expectations and contexts are. Our partners have sat on the client side of consulting engagements; we have received the recommendation, then had to make it work with a real team and a real deadline. That changes what you produce. Alongside our core team, we maintain a network of specialist associates, with deep expertise in the sectors we serve and execution capabilities.
And notably, we are comfortable being measured the way our clients are measured, by what changes in the numbers. We agree at the start what number we will be judged on and that guides a client-consultant relationship that is judged on execution and measurable outcomes.
What does ‘Impact, measured’ mean in practice?
That’s indeed our tagline. It means we write down where the numbers stand before we start. That sounds obvious, and it is remarkable how often it is skipped. If you have no baseline, “did it work?” becomes a matter of opinion at the end. We would rather it be a matter of record.
Looking ahead, what is the ambition with the firm?
We’re aiming to be the go-to firm that Saudi organizations call when the work has to actually land. We would rather be known for a small number of engagements that visibly changed something than for a large number of reports. Growth will follow from that, not the other way round.
In the coming year we will continue to build the foundation for our growth. We will grow the team, expand our client networks, and enhance our positioning in the market through knowledge and thought leadership. We already publish a weekly market briefing [called ‘The Baseline’] and we will keep putting our thinking out in public; it is how people can judge whether we are worth a conversation.
About Osamah Alfadda
Osamah Alfadda is CEO of Impactors. He previously served Alinma Bank, where he was General Manager of the Digital Banking Factory, and before that he was Chief Consumer Officer at neoleap. He holds an MBA from Saudi Electronic University and has more than 18 years of experience across fintech, banking and digital transformation.
